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Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Chicken Kerabu ( Kelantan Peranakan Dish )

I am not surprised that many of us are not aware of the Peranakans and also the Peranakan dishes in Kelantan. From what i understand and read, the Peranakans in Kelantan is just a very small community. They live and speak just like the local kelantanese malay, and some with a little bit of hokkien with some influence from the Malay and Thai language and call themselves Cina Kampung as this community lives exclusively in the kampung ( village ) and their houses are just like the local malay houses and some Peranakans have even Malay nicknames. They are different from the urban Kelantanese Chinese and they communicate with each other by speaking the Kelantanese Malay though the scenarios may have changed now as more and more those in the younger generation can speak Mandarin. You can read further on the Peranakan Kelantanese by clicking here

There are strong influences from the Malays and Thais in the Peranakan dish and this chicken kerabu is one of the Kelantan Peranakan Dish. While the dish tastes very similar to the usual thai style kerabu, here we can see that it uses some local leaves like laksa leaves, gula melaka ( palm sugar) and also Budu, a local fish sauce which is very popular used by the people from the state of Kelantan. You can subsitute ordinary fish sauce for budu if you do not have one. I got a small bottle of budu just to make this from Jaya Jusco. I would say this is a very delicious kerabu dish.

bottle of budu

Recipe (The Hungry Caterpillar )
1/4 of chicken ( i used 2 parts of chicken breasts)
enough water to boil the chicken